"Giorgione is regarded as a unique figure in the history of art: almost no other Western painter has left so few secure works and enjoyed such fame..." Sylvia Ferino-Pagden.

My website, MyGiorgione, now includes my interpretations of Giorgione's "Tempest" as "The Rest on the Flight into Egypt"; his "Three Ages of Man" as "The Encounter of Jesus with the Rich Young Man"; Titian's, "Sacred and Profane Love" as "The Conversion of Mary Magdalen"; and Titian's "Pastoral Concert" as his "Homage to Giorgione".

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Giorgione’s most famous painting
is called the “Tempest” because of the storm that dominates the background. Why
did Giorgione use this device? Was it his own invention or did he rely on a
motif common during his time? Are there other examples?

Giorgione: TheTempest

Three
years after Giorgione’s untimely death in 1510, his younger associate Titian,
who had worked with him on the fresco cycle on the Fondaco dei Tedeschi
received a commission from the Venetian government to paint a battle scene for
one of the rooms in the Ducal palace. Here is Carlo Ridolfi’s account from his
biography of Titian written in the mid seventeenth century.

It was then decreed by the
senate that he should paint for the Sala del Gran Consiglio the armed encounter
at Cadore between the imperial troops and the Venetians. In this work, he
imagined the natural site of his hometown with the castle situated above on a
high mountain where the flash from a lightning bolt in the form of an arrow is
suspended and misty globes in the manner of clouds are forming, mixed among the
terrors of the unexpected tempest; meanwhile the battlefield is obstructed by
the horrible conflict of knights and foot-soldiers, some of whom were defending
with their rapiers the imperial flag, stirred by the wind and boldly moving in
the air.*

Titian: Battle of Cadore (engraving)

The editors of a modern
translation of Ridolfi note that Titian’s painting was begun between 1513 and
1516 but that it was only completed in 1537-8. The also point out that the
painting was destroyed by fire in 1577 and that Ridolfi was confused about the
subject, since the battle depicted was a legendary battle of Spoleto in which
Venetian forces did not take part.

Nevertheless, either the
painting was described to Ridolfi or he saw an engraving made before the fire.
Despite the confusion about the subject, there seems no reason to doubt that
shortly after Giorgione’s death Titian used a storm and a bolt of lightning to
indicate a scene of violent death and destruction taking place below.

Joachim Patenier was
another contemporary of Giorgione. In one of his many versions of the “Rest on
the Flight into Egypt”, now in the Prado and dated around 1515, Patenier
painted a storm in the left background above the city from which the Holy
family had fled. The narrative follows their route since we see the legendary
wheat field in the right mid-ground. The field is bathed in light and the sky
above is blue with a couple of white clouds. The Madonna and Child sit in the
foreground also bathed in bright sunlight.

Joachim Patenier: Rest on the Flight into Egypt

The stormy clouds in the
background above the city indicate another scene of death and destruction. This
time it is not a battle but the Massacre of the Holy Innocents. It was not
uncommon to see some reference to the Massacre in versions of the flight into
Egypt.

Finally, although not a
painting, Pietro Aretino’s gave a very vivid image of the scene of the
Crucifixion in his “Humanity of Christ.”

Meanwhile the darkness
which had lasted from the sixth hour to the ninth, grew so black that it seemed
day had hidden beneath the cloak of night. The clouds driving through the air
and obscuring vision resembled a thousand banners of vast size arrayed against
the eye of the sun. The sky itself groaned in unprecedented horror. The pallid
lightning flashed. The very globe appeared about to dissolve in mist.**

Once again dark clouds
interspersed with lightning cover a scene of death and destruction. Could
Tintoretto have been aware of Aretino’s description?

Tintoretto: Crucifixion

Aretino’s popular
religious work was written twenty five years after the death of Giorgione but
the origins of his imagery can be found much earlier. In 1538 Aretino quarreled
with Niccolo Franco, one of his many hangers on, and threw him out of his
house. In his biography of Aretino James Cleugh printed Franco’s letter
justifying his behavior.

The Aretine cannot say I
am ungrateful’—he wrote to the scholar Francesco Alunno,…’for even though I
admit he sometimes fed me, he cannot deny that I repaid this courtesy sevenfold
by the work I did for him. Everyone knows that if it had not been for me he
would not have had the skill to translate all those legends of the Holy fathers
which he embroiders and passes off as his own.***

It would appear that many
of the details in Aretino’s “Humanity of Christ” came from earlier but now
forgotten popular religious works.

In each of these three
examples a storm signals a tragedy going on below. I have argued that in the
“Tempest” Giorgione's painted a version of the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” where he used the storm and lightning for much the same purpose. Just as in Patinier’s
painting Giorgione's Madonna and Child rest in bright sunlight while the storm rages
over the city of Bethlehem in the background.

Moreover, in my
interpretation I agreed with those who had argued that the city in the
background of Giorgione’s painting could also be Padua during the War of the
League of Cambrai. In 1509 Padua had been lost, retaken, but then besieged by
Imperial forces over the summer. The storm of war was indeed over the city.

Scholars should consider
looking for the source of the storm not in antiquity or humanist tracts but in
popular vernacular religious stories. They might also consider the theatrical
performances so popular in Italy during this time.

On a visit to her home
town of Ferrara in 1503 Isabella d’Este, the famed Marchioness of Mantua,
attended an elaborate dramatization at the Archbishop’s house on the occasion
of the feast of the Annunciation. She wrote,

I…saw the wooden stage which had been erected for the occasion. A young
Angel spoke the argument of the play, quoting the words of the Prophets who
foretold the Advent of Christ, and the said Prophets appeared, speaking their
prophecies translated into Italian verse. Then Mary appeared, under a portico
supported by eight pillars, and began to repeat some verses from the Prophets,
and while she spoke, the sky opened, revealing a figure of God the Father,
surrounded by a choir of angels, and six other seraphs hovered in the air,
suspended by chains. On the center of the group was the Archangel Gabriel, to
whom God the Father addressed His word, and after receiving his orders, Gabriel
descended with admirable artifice, and stood, half-way in the air, at the same
height as the organ. Then, all of a sudden, an infinite number of lights broke
out at the foot of the angel-choir, and hid them in a blaze of glory…At that
moment the Angel Gabriel alighted on the ground, and the iron chain which he held was not seen, so that he
seemed to float down on a cloud, until his feet rested on the floor. After
delivering his message he returned with the other angels to heaven, to the
sound of singing and music and melody…when they had ascended into heaven, some
scenes of the Visitation of St. Elizabeth and St. Joseph were given, in which
the heavens opened again and an angel descended,…to manifest the Incarnation of
Jesus to Joseph, and set his doubts to rest regarding the Conception of the
Holy Virgin. So the festa ended. #

One can only imagine what special effects they might have used in celebrations of the Adoration of the Magi, or the Massacre of the Innocents.

It could also be that Giorgione and Titian were both just painting from
nature. In all my years I have never heard a thunderstorm so violent and
dramatic as the one I witnessed on a visit to beautiful Lake Garda a few years
ago. All night long lightning flashed and thunder reverberated back and forth
through the foothills of the Dolomites not far from the respective birthplaces
of both Giorgione and Titian. ###

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Here is just a brief post to direct readers to a wonderful exposition of Duccio's Maesta that David Orme has put up recently on his website at art threads. Just click on the Duccio section and you will be able to scroll through all the panels on both the front and rear of the famed altarpiece.

In addition to the depiction of the Madonna and Child, the front panels depict scenes from the life of Mary. The focus of the rear is the Passion and Death of Christ with panels depicting scenes from the life of Christ with emphasis on the Passion narrative.

David, a professed agnostic with a love for Italy and its art, has provided the relevant scriptural passages as well as brief comments.

This site is devoted to Giorgione and the Venetian Renaissance but I couldn't resist the opportunity to draw attention to David's work on Siena's famous Maesta, an altarpiece that I now see ranks right up there with Giotto's work in Padua's Scrovegni chapel.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

I
am not ashamed to admit that I have used the writings of Anna Jameson, a now
neglected nineteenth century English writer on Renaissance art, in my studies
of Giorgione and Titian. First of all, I love the vivacity of her style. Here
she is deploring the varied attempts to depict Mary Magdalen.

We have Magdalenes who look as if they never
could have sinned, and others who look as if they never could have repented; we
have Venetian Magdalenes with the air of courtesans, and Florentine Magdalenes
with the air of Ariadnes; and Bolognese Magdalenes like sentimental Niobes; and
French Magdalenes, moitie galantes, moitie devotes; and Dutch Magdalenes, who
wring their hands like repentant washerwomen. The Magdalenes of Rubens remind
us of the ‘unfortunate Miss Bailey;’ and the Magdalenes of Vandyck are fine
ladies who have turned Methodists.*

This
passage also illustrates the depth and breadth of her knowledge. Mrs. Jameson
was an Englishwoman whose life resembled that of a character from a Jane Austen
novel. Her father was an educated man but of no great means. She made a bad
marriage that quickly fell apart, and had to turn to writing to support
herself. She had a great interest in the art of the Renaissance and fortunately
somehow managed to travel extensively on the Continent.

A
reading of her two major works, “Sacred and Legendary Art,” and “Legends of the
Madonna,” makes it clear that she saw an extraordinary number of paintings on
her travels, and that she managed in an age before digital cameras and laptops
to retain an incredible amount of knowledge. From her writings it is clear that
she had a keen eye for observation; an encyclopedic knowledge of the legends
and stories that formed the basis of most Renaissance art; and a great flair
for descriptive writing. Here is
her description of a Giorgione masterpiece that is now known as “The Three
Philosophers.”

“I
must mention a picture by Giorgione in the Belvedere Gallery, well known as one
of the few undoubted productions of that rare and fascinating painter, and
often referred to because of its beauty. Its significance has hitherto escaped
all writers on art, as far as I am acquainted with them, and has been dismissed
as one of his enigmatical allegories. It is called in German, Die Feldmasser
(the Land Surveyors), and sometimes styled in English the Geometricians, or the
Philosophers, or the Astrologers. …I have myself no doubt that this beautiful
picture represents the “three wise men of the East,” watching on the Chaldean
hills the appearance of the miraculous star…” (332)

Her
interpretation, which is shared by some prominent art historians today, shows
not only her knowledge and appreciation of Giorgione and his work but also her
familiarity with the ancient stories and legends so popular during the Renaissance.
Even in her time these legends had been largely forgotten. In her introduction to “Sacred and
Legendary Art” she wrote,

It
is curious, this general ignorance with regard to the subjects of Medieval Art,
more particularly now that it has become a reigning fashion among us. We find
no such ignorance with regard to the subjects of classical Art, because the
associations connected with them form a part of every liberal education….(8)

In
the old times the painters of these legendary scenes and subjects could always
reckon on certain associations and certain sympathies in the minds of the
spectators. We have outgrown these associations, we repudiate these sympathies.
We have taken these works from their consecrated localities, in which they once
held their dedicated place, and we have hung them in our drawing-rooms and our
dressing-rooms, over our pianos and our sideboards—and now what do they say to
us?...can they speak to us of nothing save flowing lines and correct drawing
and gorgeous color? (9)

It
was only in her work that I was able to find the story of the encounter of the
Holy Family with robbers on the flight into Egypt. This story formed the basis
for my interpretation of a lost Giorgione that scholars today still persist in
calling the “Discovery of Paris.”

Jameson
attributed this scholarly blindness to the prejudice engendered by the
Reformation. Speaking of the legends of the Medieval church she wrote,

This
form of hero-worship has become, since the Reformation, strange to us—as far
removed from our sympathies and associations as if it were antecedent to the
fall of Babylon and related to the religion of Zoroaster, instead of being left
but two or three centuries behind us, and closely connected with the faith of
our forefathers and the history of civilization and Christianity. (1)

Our
puritanical ancestors chopped off the heads of Madonnas and Saints, and paid
vagabonds to smash the storied windows of our cathedrals;--now, are these
rejected and outraged shapes of beauty coming back to us, or are we not rather
going back to them? (6)

She
insisted that the legendswere “an
intense expression of the inner life of the Middle Ages”…”and that the art of
the renaissance could not be properly understood without them.” (2) She
bemoaned the prejudice of her own time.

It
is about a hundred years since the passion, or the fashion, for collecting
works of Art began to be generally diffused among the rich and noble of this
land; and it is amusing to look back and to consider the perversions and
affectations of the would-be connoisseurship during this period;…any inquiry
into the true spirit and significance of works of Art, as connected with the
history of Religion and Civilization, would have appeared ridiculous—or perhaps
dangerous; we should have had another cry of “No Popery,” and Acts of
Parliament forbidding the importation of Saints and Madonnas….(7)

She
also criticized the art dealers and collectors of her time, and, I suppose, our time.

The
very manner in which the names of the painters were pedantically used instead
of the name of the subject is indicative of this factitious feeling; the only
question at issue was, whether such a picture was a genuine “Raphael”? such
another a genuine “Titian”? The spirit of the work—whether that was genuine;
how far it was influenced by the faith and the condition of the age which
produced it; whether the conception was properly characteristic, and of what it
was characteristic—of the subject? or of the school? or of the time?—whether
the treatment corresponded to the idea within our own souls, or was modified by
the individuality of the artist, or by the received conventionalisms of all
kinds? –these are questions which had not then occurred to any one; and I am
not sure that we are much wiser even now; yet,… how can we do common justice to
the artist, unless we can bring his work to the test of truth? And how can we
do this, unless we know what to look for, what was intended as to incident,
expression, character?

Today
most scholars are unaware of Mrs. Jameson and her work, or think it is
hopelessly outdated. As a result most graduate students have never heard her
name. Fortunately, I believe that online versions are now available. A reader has informed me that reprints of her books can be found here.